Scientific Instruments in the History of Psychology

Description

This workshop seeks to bring together historians, philosophers, psychologists and museum curators interested in the question of the role of instruments in nineteenth-century experimental psychology as well as in contemporary cognitive science. The aim of this event is twofold: (1) to foster interdisciplinary research on psychology’s objects, its techniques, and its history; and (2) to contribute to our current understanding of the value of history for both philosophy of science and scientific practice.

Contemporary science (and particularly psychology) has been witnessing a “replication crisis,” which stimulated methodological remedies (Shrout and Rodgers 2018) and philosophical reflection (Wiggins and Christopherson 2019). Historians and philosophers of science working with historical experiments have generally refrained from calling such activity “replication” (Fors, Principe, and Sibum 2016, 93). Yet they admit that the trial-and-error process through which their research unfolds shows “little difference [from] doing experimental science itself” (Id., 95). Moreover, while discussions around replication unfold on the backdrop of a progressive picture of psychology, historians and philosophers of science have acknowledged the potential of recovering “dead-ends” – i.e., “failed” theories or explanations – afforded by the interaction with past experiments.

Such activities of reconstruction may be a way to “continue science by other means” (Chang 1999) and to put aside the cumulative picture of scientific knowledge. By focusing on instruments’ design, adaptation, and on the practices surrounding their usage, this workshop will connect the material, embodied, contextual and institutional aspects that define experimental psychology and investigate knowledge framing and knowledge production as practices. “Instruments” will be taken in a broad sense, to include “brass and glass” artifacts (Tweney 2003; Cristalli and Jackson 2023) as well as drawings (Gestalt or bistable images, Rorschach inkblots, etc.), surveys, questionnaires, narratives, and quantitative approaches.

Program

9:00 registration & welcome

9:30-10:30 (Keynote) Isabel Tissot, “Best practices and pitfalls in the practical history and philosophy of science: A conservation perspective.”

10:30-10:15 coffee break

10:45-11:15 Jan Huisman, “About the history and use of the laboratory and instrumentation of Gerard Heymans”

11:15-11:45 Andy Lattal, “Early Apparatus for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior”

11:45-12:15 Rebecca Jackson & Claudia Cristalli, “Peirce and Jastrow's pressure balance and their 1884 experiment: lessons for HPS”

12:15-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14: Stéphanie Dupouy, “Alfred Binet (1857-1911), with or without instruments”

14:00-14:30 Sasha Bergstrom-Katz, “Readymade Performance: Concretizing Improvisation into Standardized Procedures”

14:30-14:15 Coffee break 

14:15-14:45 Jeremy Blatter, "Reanimating Psychotechnics: Hugo Münsterberg, Applied Psychology, and Experimental History of Science".(online)

14:45-15 Kathy Faye, “The Cummings Centre for the History of Psychology, Akron” (online)

15:00-16:00 roundtable discussion

16:00-17:00 (Keynote) Alexander Klein - "William James and “Brass Instruments”: What Did he Really Think of Experimental Psychology?"

Registration

For registration, please send an email to p.t.vangemert(@)tilburguniversity.edu

Practical information

Location: The conference will take place in DZ8 in the Dante Building of Tilburg University. The address of Tilburg University is: Warandelaan 2, 5037 AB Tilburg, The Netherlands.

Accessibility: The Dante Building, room AZ017 and DZ8, lunch options and conference dinner venues are wheelchair accessible. Detailed information about accessibility at Tilburg university can be found on the university’s accessibility pages.